


We share our mother’s health

by Kaesteranya



Series: Widows & Divorcees [2]
Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-14
Updated: 2010-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re seeing somebody, aren’t you? Or you were, anyway… same banana, especially if you’re hung up on it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	We share our mother’s health

“You’re seeing somebody, aren’t you? Or you were, anyway… same banana, especially if you’re hung up on it.”

  
Yukari took the stirrer and began drawing figure 8’s in her coffee. Her mother lit up a cigarette. She wondered what had inspired the woman to attempt to bond with her estranged daughter by talking about men. She also wondered, as she often did, why she still gave her mother the opportunity to attempt to bond in the first place.

  
“Don’t try to deny it,” mother went on, in that sort of mother’s tone that should have been teasing but ended up backfiring into patronizing. “I know love when I see it. Or what you must THINK is love, anyway. You know, ideally you’re too young to know what it is, and too old to be duped by bullshit.”

  
Usually, Yukari’s mother would take the opportunity to talk (rave, bitch, weep over) this or that boyfriend (sometimes ex, sometimes current), “since we’re on the topic anyway, yeah?” So, of course, Yukari was a little surprised at the woman’s silence. Or maybe it was because she was retouching her lipstick.

  
“Well? Speak up, girl. We’re rarely together like this, you know.”

  
Since she had grown past the stages where using tears or sullen “You think you know mes” were in fashion, Yukari did not immediately answer. She was thoroughly tempted to tell her mother about everything — the Dark Hour, the truth behind her father, the embrace by the coastline, the room in an obscure corner of the hospital — just so that she could, for the first time in her life, have the pleasure of shutting her mother up. Secrets, however, were best kept to one’s self. Else, they would not be hers anymore.

  
It was evening by the time they went their separate ways: mother had a date, and Yukari supposedly had other things to do beyond play the obedient daughter. The girl rode the train: they were playing his favorite song. She got off at the next stop and took the bus instead.

  
The hospital was closing down to visitors, but the staff did not stop her — she was a friend of the Kirijo Group, and their reach was long. Yukari found herself hurrying, impatient and almost anxious to reach the room. She told herself that it was because Aigis was having her routine check-up at the labs and it didn’t seem right for him to be alone.

  
She found him as she always did: lying still, eyes closed, thinner than he should have been, sleeping the sleep of the undead. She did not know what made her take off her shoes and slip between the sheets beside him. She blamed it on her mother and that woman’s many men and empty nights.

  
The room was quiet, but Yukari could barely hear him breathing. She put her head against his chest, counting out the beat of his heart.  



End file.
